Upwards and Onwards (May 28 2009)

Question: so what's up with the near time persistency checker (NTPCkr)? If the live web streaming were working last Thursday you would have seen the tail end of my and Jeff's talk where Jeff went into a little details about the current status of things. Basically, we have some screws to tighten here and there, but the general thing is working. We're up against some database throughput issues which we hope to fix sooner than later, plus we are still tweaking the scoring algorithms. We hope to have a public page available soon where you can peer into the progress of things. Until then, here's version 0.0.1 of the NTPCkr FAQ.

It's becoming clearer that we need to adjust the weight of our applications so that we send out more SETI@home/multibeam workunits. We have things effectively set such that Astropulse work gets sent out as soon as it becomes available. This was partly to expedite getting as many Astropulse results back as possible (in the interest of getting that science done) but this is getting less and less possible given our resources and current participant demands. Things on this front may shift in the near future.

We've been near our bandwidth limit for the past day since unclogging the mysql database, providing more data for Astropulse to split, and our active user base going up about 15% over the past couple of weeks. This may account for recent upload/download difficulty. It looks like it's getting better, as least for the moment.

- Matt
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-- BOINC/SETI@home network/web/science/development person
-- "Any idiot can have a good idea. What is hard is to do it." - Jeanne-Claude

The NitPicker FAQ looks good, but its a bit like showing a child your bar of chocolate and saying you can eat some of this chocolate SOON!, just not right now!

Give us a sneak preview Matt, I'm dying to get a taste of the real thing :)

The live web streaming was NOT working last Thursday! We could not see it and its not avalable for download.

John.
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I must confess......
The kitties will be a bit upset if you back off on AP availability...they have barely been able to keep the caches full for the last week or so.

I was under the impression that AP, due to it's longer crunch times, was actually easier on the Seti servers than having a bunch of Cuda monsters pounding on the door for more work constantly....

Now you want to increase the availability of MB at the expense of AP work????

I am sorry.....I do not quite understand.
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"Ask not, what your kitty can do for you. Ask what you can do for your kitty."

As it is kitten, so shall it be done.

I must confess......
The kitties will be a bit upset if you back off on AP availability...they have barely been able to keep the caches full for the last week or so.

I was under the impression that AP, due to it's longer crunch times, was actually easier on the Seti servers than having a bunch of Cuda monsters pounding on the door for more work constantly....

Now you want to increase the availability of MB at the expense of AP work????

I am sorry.....I do not quite understand.

My little Celeron has been getting a nice mix of 6.03s and 6.08s with just enough APs to keep things interesting here lately. Sure would be nice if it keeps it up.

Mark, have you looked at the server status page recently?

There are 130 'tapes' listed there: Astropulse has 'done' 128 of them, so they're just sitting there, waiting to be split for MB.

That's something like six terabytes of raw data, being kept online simply because the AP and MB split/issue rates are out of balance.

Although raw storage hasn't been such a problem for the project since the Overland Storage donation, that contribution was 'only' ten terabytes: using over half of that just to keep the kitties supplied with their particular flavour of kibble seems just a touch excessive!

Seriously, wouldn't it be better for the project as a whole if both types of work were consistently available, and split at roughly the same speed?

I'm in the "Wanting More AP" camp....

I would suggest that the balance over the last month has been to give out AP to anyone requesting work, wether they want it, or can even process it in time.

I like AP because it pays better, and the PCs that I have selected to run it...well they can do it.

A bit of priority to the folks that WANT AP and give the MB to the folks running standard seti, probably keep more folks happy?

Ian

As in the few AP tasks I have there are several _6's, I do think, even though I agree we should be doing both applications, that the time has come for AP to be user selected only.
Sending out 7 copies at 8 MByte each cannot be helping with the bandwidth or database problems, and being user selected only should almost eliminate this problem.
It should also help balance the AP/MB splitting as all computers are capable of processing MB tasks but some are marginal at processing AP tasks within the deadline.

I agree with Perry on this. when i ran AP on my old P4 to many times i got slow wingmen or they just aborted. It was bad enough to crunch for 8 days then wait for 2 more months to get it validated.
i remember my first AP i aborted it to. Then i started reading the forums and learned what was up.


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As in the few AP tasks I have there are several _6's, I do think, even though I agree we should be doing both applications, that the time has come for AP to be user selected only.

I second that also.

I just completed a _8 AP task. It was rattling around the world since February.

You can uncheck both "AP's" in the "Preferences" section. Be sure to also uncheck the "If no work for selected applications is available, accept work from other applications?" section also.

I would call this "User selectable".
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You can uncheck both "AP's" in the "Preferences" section. Be sure to also uncheck the "If no work for selected applications is available, accept work from other applications?" section also.

I would call this "User selectable".

I understand now.
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